Page 69 of Mating Her Dragon

Sydney went still against him.

Garrett felt it the instant it happened. The Bond was fully open. There was no wall left between what she felt and what reached him.

The Living Threshold beside his scar lit up, suddenly and electrically, like an old road remembering the weight of traffic after a long silence. He felt the consent architecture Sydney had built settle over it, not a wall, not a lock, but law. Her law, laid gently and completely over whatever Keevandrie had originally carved there.

Then something hit the other side.

Hard.

THUD.

Leviathan, Garrett understood immediately, had expected an open highway. He got a locked door instead.

He tried again. It was bigger and harder the second time. Garrett felt its pressure even through the closed threshold. The Hell behind it, filled with hunger and rage, was pressed flat against a boundary that simply did not move.

The threshold held.

Sydney's eyes had gone wide, but there was no fear in them. Just astonishment.

"It worked," she breathed.

"That sounds dangerously like you’re surprised," Garrett said.

Another impact, harder than the last. Still, nothing crossed.

Because whatever door that was, on whichever side it opened– Leviathan had never once been invited through it. Then something in Sydney's expression changed, and Garrett's stomach dropped before she'd said a single word.

The Black Magic on the far side of the threshold pooled and stilled. Garrett would have sworn it noticed her, too.

Now that the Mating was complete, Sydney could see farther down that road than she ever had before. Not because Garrett had given her power. Because he gave her orientation. She had an anchor, a direction, a fixed point called home that let her look without losing herself in the looking. She had him, and through the fully opened Mating Bond he felt every shift in her presence– her emotions, her Magic, the instant her attention locked onto something beyond the threshold.

Garrett understood... exactly what she was thinking

For the first time, Sydney saw the other shore clearly. Hell. Not all of it. Just where this particular road ended.

Leviathan.

Garrett understood, in the half-second before she said anything, exactly what she was thinking. “Oh, no.”

"Sydney."

"I can see him."

"That was not the concern contained in my tone."

She almost laughed. He felt the ghost of it flicker through the Mating Bond, right alongside something steadier and far more dangerous. But she didn't lean toward the threshold. She didn't reach for it at all.

She reached for Garrett’s hand instead.

"Home?" she asked.

Garrett understood exactly what she was asking, and exactly what it meant that she'd asked instead of simply going.

He gripped her hand. "Always…"

He stopped himself. Corrected, the way he was learning to, every single time it mattered.

"Yes," he said. "I'm here."